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Have you ever, even for once, thought that teaching little kids is an easy job? It’s not. I am telling you from my own experience.

Late at night, when all my best friends were probably snuggling cosily with their husbands or boyfriends, I was evaluating the answer sheets of twelve year olds. Quite a life, I have.

You know what I do when I get stressed out? I read poetry. I am that awful writer who always wished that one day I might write something which I wouldn’t regret later on in life. That never happened. I still write like a lovesick teenage girl. Yes, you got it right. I wouldn’t do well as a feminist.

I ran my fingers through my bookshelf and randomly picked up a poetry book and surprise, surprise! It was Blake’s lucky night. As I imagined a fiery, ever powerful man, pouring the flame of his candlelight into the sockets of a tiger which he just sculpted out of thin air, I stood awed. The tiger’s physique and the description were truly sensuous, to the point of hyperventilation even; that is if you know what I mean. The only relief I had after this quick escape to the realms of the imaginary was that ‘Twilight’ was not the first or only book in which people romanticized animals to the point of eccentricity.

I rushed to the kitchen to ease my restlessness by finding something to munch. I quickly made some salad, so that my hunger could find its salvation. Quietly gobbling down the vegetables, I switched on my laptop to find someone online to chat with. Apart from few random friends, nobody was online. At least, not the people I wanted to pour my heart out to. I was getting more restless with each passing second. What can I do?

I woke up the next morning to realize I got only two weeks of vacation left. Two weeks from now, the school will reopen and by then I’ll have to evaluate all the papers and make progress reports too. Surprisingly, I finished all that yesterday night. The perks of having nothing much to do, I should tell you.

I started packing after breakfast. I’ll have to reach the old farmhouse by the evening and set up the ambience for the meeting that was going to take place on the 13th of June. My best friends and I had decided to meet after 10 years and it was day after tomorrow. Even though we were in touch, thanks to technology, we never really got a chance to meet up not even once in these ten years. Five of them were married, two engaged and the one left has been in a steady relationship for 8 years now. I’ve always been the black sheep. An excellent example for the after effects of “playing with the fire”, I was. Some of them call me “commitment-phobic” and the others think I am too proud to be in a relationship with a man. Truth to be told, I got heartbroken once and then I promised myself that I’d never get to that position ever again. And I believe in keeping promises.

When I got to the old farmhouse, it was as quiet and beautiful as ever; like a loving mother, waiting for her children to come back. Look at her; she will forgive us all for our every sin. I asked the housekeeper to clean the place up and decorate the place with red and blue lights: fire and ice would be the theme. I set out to the town to order some flowers for day after. The florist’s place was literally “heaven on earth” with a hundred varieties of flowers and leaves adorning its every nook and corner. I smiled melancholically and they smiled back at me as if they knew my secrets; my pain.

There is this view of the lake on the way back to the farmhouse. There are these wooden benches and a boulevard of cherry trees. I always wished to live in a place like this. Never really liked the din and frenzy of city life, I should add. I sat down on one of those benches and conversed with the water and air about their own beauty. “How come you never age?” I asked them. They laughed and told me that they change with every rain and every drought; “It is you who don’t change”, they told me. “You can die, we can’t and therefore, you are luckier than us; we are cursed”. They looked sad when they engrossed themselves in their melancholic ramblings. I sighed and looked at the sky. She acknowledged my sorrow and sighed with me and the winds roared across the cherry trees.

With my eyes fixed at the distant nothingness, I failed to realize a dark, tall and lonely figure approaching me. It came and sat next to me. The wind brushed past our faces. The long lost fragrance of memories burned my nostrils. “I prayed much that you wouldn’t come”, I said. “I am cursed with a remarkable memory. Even though the optimist in me was made a martyr of love 10 years ago, I never stopped believing in myself”, he said. “Well done, Ry. You’ve managed to keep yourself as insane as you were”, I told him. I stood up and started walking. He followed me.

We walked into the realms of our past. There stood the younger version of us, holding hands and looking at each other with eyes that spoke of profound sadness. That was the first time he broke a promise: let’s part, he told me then. The Us from the present walked further down the memory lane and reached the college gates. Sports day, it was. Sitting in those stands with friends and watching the finale of the intercollegiate football match where Ry was a midfielder, I was waiting for them to win and to end the long awaited suspense. In twenty minutes, I did break it to Ry.

He proposed in the first year and me, being the haughty New Girl, rejected him and stuck to the Lets-Be-Friends theme. And on that last football match, I proposed to him. He accepted with a cheeky smile that said “You are stuck with me forever, girl”. One more month and college would end. But we were waiting for the end as we planned to make it all known to our parents. We were the craziest couple you could set your eyes on. Our wordplay was quite famous in the whole friend circle. Even more famous were our weird fights – yes, we used to fight for fun. We were that couple who enjoyed being at each other’s throat at every given opportunity; but our love was evident even in those cat-eats-rat games of ours.

The excitement and the adrenaline rush kept on increasing with each kiss and every slap. On the eve of the very last day, he proposed to marriage – the only thing left to do. As always, the coward in me rejected the notion. What was my excuse? We are too young to be married. He was furious. We got into a fierce cold war which resulted in a physical fight and eventually, in sweet lovemaking. I was leaving the next day and we won’t be able to meet up for years. Neither of us liked the idea. So we went for a therapeutic walk. Under the cherry trees, we sat reminiscing the past for a long time. A mad tripe of our insane days together flashed before our eyes. We were meant to be together, said our friends’ adoring eyes. You’ll be remembered, chanted the college walls. So we decided to part and meet in 10 years if we were really meant to be. It was then that he broke our promise. He cried. I never wanted our last meeting to end with tears. But he had to cry. That was how it was supposed to be. So much so that the poetry in his tears rung in my ears even after a decade.

My eyes found its destination and it was reciprocating the gaze. Ryan. How much I missed you! My eyes told him thus. You can read my eyes but I can read your sighs, said his eyes. I have been reading them for 10 years, give me some credit! – He added. I passionately gazed at those windows that showed me my dream. It came true.

“Can we walk into the future together?” he asked earnestly. I thought for a while. “Yes”, I said.
The sky split open to shower us with heavenly fireworks. Invisible crystalline flowers kept tickling us as it fell on our bodies. The Night conquered us with a majestic sweep of her arms. We stepped forward to enter into that wild dance with which the wind was engaged. It swept us off our feet and threw us into the crescent where we landed, giggling wildly. The laughter transgressed the boundaries of inflaming lust. And in that ecstatic moment, did we close our eyes to open it in the split of a second.

I found myself alone, waiting for the night to wake me up. I stood up and followed the quiet path to the old farmhouse. The grassy path whispered an occult chant into my weary ears. But I was too engrossed with the rhythm of my footsteps. An eternity awaits me. Not many get a chance to go back and change the past. My firm footsteps annoyed my tiny grassy friends but I marched on. My heart and foot marched hand in hand to go back to that day, to Ry and to a future that never existed before.

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I want to cry, I told him. I want to scream till every pore in my skin oozed out the pain I bore in my heart. Everything will be ok and things will be better, he said. I am not so sure, I replied. He got up and left.

My last hope, my best friend, just left me. I was not to stop believing in myself though. I will still fight, I told myself.

It was on the very same day that I met Him last year. Everything was just the same except for my partner at this Café. I was waiting for my bestie but he didn’t turn up. And He turned up instead. He was waiting for no one. Seeing that I am waiting for someone, He came and sat next to me. Do you have a cigarette to spare? I asked Him as I saw Him smoking. He offered me a pack and I took one out of decency. I want to fall in love, I told Him. Sure, let’s get married, He said. Okay. When? That was my response. He got up and left without saying a word. I knew I’d never forget Him. And I didn’t. My bestie told me that I am crazy, though. Maybe he is right.

Six months later, I dreamt of Him. He got married to me in a dream. My bestie took me to a shrink when I told him this. The shrink told my friend that “there are reasons to worry about.” He was right. I was diagnosed with cancer last month. And it was the last stage. Just my luck, you know.

So I decided to be normal for a change. Or what my bestie thought was normal. I woke up at 6 and went to the piano classes and got back around 8 and went to college. I was never a brilliant student so it didn’t matter if I went to classes or not. I spent my evening with Sam, my bestie. I should have told his name before, no?

I made it a point to have supper with my parents. They’ll soon lose their only child. Sam says it’s really painful to lose someone whom you loved. I never really loved anyone. I always asked Sam if it is necessary to have eyesight to fall in love. I have always been sans vision. I mean eyesight. I’d never agree with someone who would say that I got no “vision”. Am I weird?

I was born blind, yes. Out of curiosity, I’d ask Sam to tell me about his girlfriend. He’d get really irritated. She was a sweet girl but she’d never hang out with us. Later, I came to know that she never came along with him because he left her for someone else. The next girl didn’t like Sam hanging out with me so he left me for sometime until she broke up with him. I teased him that no one can stand his nonsense as much as I can. He’d love it when I told him that. He’d laugh and hug me and also, tell me that I am the best. He’s nice to me.

Anyways, I am dying and I wanted to be remembered for something. So you know what I did? I called up a random number and asked the person who took up the phone to come and meet me here at the café. She said yes. And now I am waiting. She didn’t turn up as I guessed. So I’ve decided to handover the story that I wrote to the first person I meet on my way back.

But you did know that Sam was my boyfriend, right? And I broke up with him just a few minutes ago, right? It’s just that I like imagining stuff all the time. Hope you didn’t mind. Oh yeah, the rest of it was true. I am barking mad.

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The noiseless memories rattled my mind with a pain I cannot narrate. I was walking back home after a movie. The story of a dancer. A tribute. The pain pierced through my heart to my spine. He was a wonderful dancer, my P. They called him the future. Until the day of his death, he danced like there was no tomorrow or even today. People lived a life or perhaps many lifetimes in his one performance. He was a legend; a modern master, even.

How could he fall in love with me? It was simple: I was an abstract painting that made no sense to him and he always fancied things he never understood. He liked puzzles and the slow unraveling of the mystery. In simple words, he was a man fond of foreplay than the act of sex itself. We were a couple made to tear the bedspreads.
I walked into my studio apartment on the fourth floor and switched on the lights. As always the first thing I saw was the pictures of P all along the wall. Being a professional photographer, I was always proud of my skills. But looking at these pictures, I felt that I couldn’t really capture that elemental thing about P. I don’t know how to put it. What do you call it? Essence? I don’t know.

The darkness emanated a sorrow which voiced my thoughts. I swiftly had a bath and went to bed. Hunger left me the day he left. I usually had a filling lunch and nothing else; no breakfast and no supper. P used to say that I cooked the same way an artist produced a work of art. Licking the food off my finger, he’d tell me that he liked the taste of my hand better than the taste of any food. Now you know what Riyan meant when he said we were made for the jungles.

Initially, I thought he was making fun of me when he said he’d die on the eve of his 29th birthday. I spent the entire month preparing for his birthday. A week before D-day, he fainted whilst rehearsals. I was dead worried and we rushed him into the hospital to face the hard truth: P was suffering from brain tumor, final stage. Even at that point, the only thing he was worried about was his show the next day. And you know what, he did it. And not just that, he danced till his last breath. He died onstage, before his fans; his wish was fulfilled.

It was two weeks after his death, that I started receiving those letters. Somebody sent me letters that told me about P’s life. Things I never knew. At first, me being the eternal romantic, I thought that it was something like P.S. I love you. But no, it wasn’t P. It wasn’t his handwriting, and those weren’t his words. P had a magic language; he’d woo you with his charming speech. The Writer had plain language, like me.

The first letter told me about the first day he saw her: Annabel. Naked. Jealousy shook me like the wind which twirls those dry leaves in the boulevard. It told me about how P by hearted the rhythm of her heartbeats and how he’d dance to it even in the darkness of his bedroom. How come I never had that effect on him?

And I thought I had never felt this jealous of any woman until I got the subsequent letters about Riza, Moira, Ameana, Nimi, Sira, Hiruki and the entire list. Suddenly, I felt so insignificant. But the fourth letter told me about the only girl with whom P wanted to have a baby. That was me. I felt like a volcano, which was confused whether to erupt or not. First of all, I couldn’t believe that P could ever nurture such “typical” thoughts and then again, I couldn’t believe I never thought of this myself.

By the eighth letter, I knew most things about P’s life. But I didn’t have as much interest in knowing P’s life as I had in knowing the Writer. Who could be this jobless to write letters to me? And moreover, who knew so much about P? It couldn’t be his parents, I was sure of that. P’s mom died 4 years ago while his dad was with his sister, in a comatose condition. His sister has a job, 3 crazy kids and a loving husband and P told me that they were never close as kids. P had one best friend, Noah. But he’s in Australia, with his wife and children and probably doesn’t even know that P died. The funniest thing about those letters was the fact that it never had an address. It just had my name. It didn’t even carry any stamps. I asked the postman, but he said that he had no idea, which, I know, is untrue.

Eight months after the death, one day, I tried to follow the postman to find out if someone passes this letter personally to the man instead of posting it. But no, I was wrong; it was indeed posted. This was getting creepier. I lost my sleep and appetite. But one day the letters stopped. I waited, but they never came. And as they never came to my doorsteps, the adventure ceased and P’s memories rushed back to the original spot. I started spending days with those memories of him that I had accumulated over the years. I organized a photo exhibition which showcased pictures of him that I had taken. It was much appreciated by many people, especially P’s fans. Some people tried to boo me my saying things which they thought would hurt me. One of them said that I photographed P during our intimate moments because I knew he was suffering and I’d earn from it some day. I don’t care, I tell you. I knew why I took those pictures. P asked me to. He did. He told me that he’d want to live in those pictures for a long time. He would not break the tie with this earth and Life, as long as he could. Why didn’t I conceive? I kept asking myself. If only I did. His tie with this world would not have broken, in a sense.

All these insanely melodramatic thoughts kept me going. Until the day I received the last letter. Finally, I got to know the Writer. He was another fan of P who got to convince P to help him write a detailed biography, which would be semi-autobiographical as it included stuff written by P too. Things he wrote to Syame, the fan, in the form of letters and which he didn’t want to be edited at all. I got to read a copy of it all. And I almost swooned in mad ecstasy when I read about a day when we had the craziest of adventures. We went on a road trip, on P’s Harley Davidson and we didn’t stop till night. And where did we stop? In a jungle, of course. We slept on the ground and made love like animals. And woke up the next day to find out that we had got so far into the jungle at night, that we were actually lost. So what did we do? No points for guessing. Made love till we embarrassed the skies, and it in return turned red. And we somehow managed to find some sense out of our nonsensical minds and we rode around for 20 minutes before hitting the main roads. When we were with each other, nothing mattered. There was the energy that flowed from me to him and vice versa and nothing other than that.

And tonight, I miss him more than ever. He would have been 30 today. On his 28th birthday, I came back to his life after staying away for a year and a half. We’ve been together since college times. He left photography for dancing. Dance was his passion and he was my Muse. I suffer from lack of inspiration at work, each and every day now. You must sleep, I told myself.

Did I know that I’d never wake up again? Yes, the doze of Seconal that I had before getting into bed was way over the limit. But you know what? P would have loved these sorts of things.

“To your memory, do I write a sonnet?
Or an epic? You say.
I will write a lyric with my love,
Dipped in the ink of my heart.
I bleed with love; and
You stained me with yours.
And now let me stain your death with mine.
Can you see me yet?
I am almost there.
Almost there.
There. “